The Book Club: Reading in December

No, we did not select “The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis” as our December read solely because it’s one of the nicest objects we’ve ever seen, perfect for gifting (wouldn’t a red bow look nice against the salmon?) though this is certainly true: when our package arrived from the publisher, “Oooohs” and “Aaaahs” could be heard throughout the halls. The book just looks and feels nice in your hands. Bravo, Charlotte Strick (she did the jacket design).

But like I said, it’s not the only reason. We selected it for sentences like this:

But if because you are translating you read, and because writing translate, because traveling write, because traveling read, and because translating travel; that is, if to read is to translate, and to translate is to write, to write to travel, to read to travel, to write to read, to read to write, and to travel to translate; then to write is also to write, and to read is also to read, and even more, because when you read you read, but also travel, and because traveling read, therefore read and read; and when reading also write, therefore read; and reading also translate, therefore read; therefore read, read, read, and read.

And we shall, Lydia Davis! We shall.

That sentence appears in a story that has just six sentences. In context, it actually makes sense. Which brings me to another reason we are reading Lydia Davis: that eminent sensemaker James Wood. He wrote in the magazine recently (available online to subscribers) that when he first encountered Davis’s work in the mid-nineties, he paid them only intermittent attention, “as their own intermittency seemed to deserve and desire.” But when this collection came out, he realized that he had been “shallow.” When a critic with as probing an eye as James Wood is surprised by a work’s unsuspected depths, we want to know why. Indeed, he finishes his review by praising the “long, deep journey we have made with the writer.”

Potential clubbers: don’t be daunted. The journey might be somewhat long, but the depths are truly sublime. Since so many of the stories are extremely brief, you can read them between holiday errands, and savor the longer ones on a plane or train ride. And Davis’s themes are not limited to semantics. They include love, loss, family, and, most importantly, how the individual copes with these things. Which is to say, Don’t head home without her book to give you courage.